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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Study On Crime And Investment In Latin America And The Caribbean, Luisa Blanco, Christabel Dadzie, Coline Dony
Study On Crime And Investment In Latin America And The Caribbean, Luisa Blanco, Christabel Dadzie, Coline Dony
Luisa Blanco
Investment is a key determinant of economic growth. This relationship underpins the growth diagnostic and constraints analysis methodology used by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and United States Government Partnership for Growth initiative with the purpose of identifying the binding constraints to growth in a given country. Recent growth diagnostics undertaken for El Salvador (2011), Guatemala (2013), and Honduras (2013) find crime and citizen insecurity to be binding constraints to growth and investment in those countries (Acevedo et al. 2011; World Bank, 2012). The approaches taken in these growth diagnostic analyses are based on indirect proxies and shadow prices of …
In The Aftermath Of The Financial Crisis Of 2008: What Have We Learned?, Luisa Blanco, Michael Crouch
In The Aftermath Of The Financial Crisis Of 2008: What Have We Learned?, Luisa Blanco, Michael Crouch
Luisa Blanco
In the aftermath of the financial crisis and economic recession of 2008, it is important to reflect not only on its causes, but also on specific policies that can help countries to move towards sustained economic growth. This publication provides a compendium of lectures that intend to do this. The focus of the discussion is around the U.S. (first two chapters) and Latin America (last chapter), which enhances our understanding of the forces at play and the necessary policies that need to be implemented in different regions of the world. Dr. Lee Ohanian points to the strange differences between the …
Latin America And The Financial Crisis Of 2008: Lessons And Challenges, Luisa Blanco
Latin America And The Financial Crisis Of 2008: Lessons And Challenges, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
In October of 2008 there were two main views of what the financial crisis would do to emerging countries in Latin America. The optimistic view predicted that they would do well overall and that the crisis would not have a significant impact on them because their economies were decoupled from the rest of the world. The pessimistic view saw these economies as vulnerable to the financial crisis, which meant they would become unstable and perform poorly. Over a year later, the outcome is something in between. This article will explain the current state of the financial crisis in Latin America …
The Impact Of Crime On Trust In Institutions In Mexico, Luisa Blanco
The Impact Of Crime On Trust In Institutions In Mexico, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
Using survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and Encuesta Nacional Sobre la Inseguridad (ENSI) from Mexico during the period of 2004-2010, this paper analyses the impact of insecurity and crime victimization on support and satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions. The analysis shows that perceptions of higher insecurity decrease support and satisfaction with democracy. We also find that perceptions of insecurity and crime victimization reduce trust in institutions, particularly in those that directly deal with crime (police and judicial system). There is regional variation in relation to trust in institutions that are associated with drug-trafficking …
The Impact Of Insecurity And Crime On Democracy And Trust In Institutions, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz
The Impact Of Insecurity And Crime On Democracy And Trust In Institutions, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz
Luisa Blanco
This paper examines the impact of crime and insecurity on support for and satisfaction with democracy and trust in institutions. We use survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) for Colombia during the 2004-2010 period. We find that perceptions of insecurity, crime victimization, being asked for a bribe and being affected by the armed conflict have a negative significant effect on satisfaction with democracy and trust in public institutions. Our findings show an important indirect channel through which crime can hinder development because distrust in institutions is associated with lower levels of social capital.
Long Live Democracy: The Determinants Of Political Instability In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
Long Live Democracy: The Determinants Of Political Instability In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
Luisa Blanco
In this paper, we investigate the determinants of political instability in Latin America. In a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1971 to 2000, we find that democratic countries experience less average instability in the region, indicating that the move to increased democracy in the last couple decades may alleviate the persistent problem of instability in the area. We also find that income inequality and ethnic fractionalization are important determinants of instability. Countries with low levels of inequality also suffer less instability on average, while ethnic diversity has a non-linear effect on instability. Many macroeconomic variables commonly thought to …
Explaining The Rise Of The Left In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
Explaining The Rise Of The Left In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
Luisa Blanco
Latin American politics has taken a left-hand turn in the last decade, with an increasing number of chief executives hailing from left-of-center parties. We investigate the political and socio-economic factors explaining political ideology of the chief executive in a sample of 100 elections taking place between 1975 and 2007 in eighteen Latin American countries. We find that the commodity booms in agricultural, mining and oil are positively and significantly related to the probability that a country will have a chief executive from a left-of-center political party. However, for oil exports, we observe that this effect only holds for Venezuela. We …
The Finance–Growth Link Revisited And The Role Of Institutions As A Source Of Finance In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
The Finance–Growth Link Revisited And The Role Of Institutions As A Source Of Finance In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
In a panel framework that includes 18 countries, this paper studies the short and long run effect of financial development on economic growth and the determinants of financial development in Latin America. Financial development shows a positive effect on economic growth in the long run, but a negative effect in the short run for the full sample. When the sample is divided by income levels, this result holds only for the high income group. For the low income group, financial development has no significant effect on economic growth in the short run or in the long run. In the analysis …
Life Is Unfair In Latin America, But Does It Matter For Growth?, Luisa Blanco
Life Is Unfair In Latin America, But Does It Matter For Growth?, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
I analyze the effect of inequality on economic growth in Latin America, where inequality is measured as the area of family farms as a percentage of the total area of agricultural holdings. Using data from 18 Latin American countries between 1960 and 2004, I find that inequality has a nonlinear effect on economic growth. Overall, for the countries included in this analysis, the share of family farms has a positive significant effect on economic growth. These findings are robust to controlling for several factors, using a different indicator of inequality (land Gini), and addressing for endogeneity.
The Impact Of Fdi On Co₂ Emissions In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Fidel Gonzalez, Isabel Ruiz
The Impact Of Fdi On Co₂ Emissions In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Fidel Gonzalez, Isabel Ruiz
Luisa Blanco
This paper uses panel Granger causality tests to study the relationship between sector specific FDI and CO2 emissions. Using a sample of 18 Latin American countries for the 1980-2007 period, we find causality running from FDI in polluting intensive industries (“the dirty sector”) to CO2 emissions per capita. This result is robust to controlling for other factors associated with CO2 emissions and using the ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP. For other sectors, we find no robust evidence that FDI causes CO2 emissions.
The (Non) Effect Of Natural Resource Dependence On Capital Accumulation In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
The (Non) Effect Of Natural Resource Dependence On Capital Accumulation In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Robin Grier
Luisa Blanco
In a simultaneous model of human and physical capital accumulation for 17 Latin American countries from 1975 to 2004, we show that overall resource dependence is not significantly related to physical and human capital. Disaggregating the natural resource variable into subcategories, we find that petroleum export dependence is associated with higher physical capital and lower human capital, while agricultural export dependence is often associated with lower levels of physical capital. All of these effects are quantitatively small, however, casting doubt on the idea that natural resource dependence has stifled the accumulation of capital in the region.
The Finance–Growth Link In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
The Finance–Growth Link In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
This paper analyzes the relationship between financial development and economic growth in Latin America with a Granger causality test and impulse response functions in a panel vector autoregression model. Using annual observations from a sample of 18 countries from 1962 to 2005, it is shown that while economic growth causes financial development, financial development does not cause economic growth. This finding is robust to different model specifications and different financial indicators. Interestingly, when the sample is divided according to different income levels and institutional quality, there is two way causality between financial development and economic growth only for the middle …
The Impact Of Spatial Interdependence On Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
The Impact Of Spatial Interdependence On Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco
Luisa Blanco
This analysis considers whether spatial interdependence is an important determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America. Two types of spatial interdependence are explored: 1) surrounding market potential and 2) spatial autocorrelation of FDI. Using a sample of 17 Latin American countries, with observations from 1986 to 2006, we find that spatial interdependence matters for world net FDI in the region. Surrounding market potential has a positive effect on FDI of significant magnitude, but there is no evidence that FDI is spatially autocorrelated. Other contributors to FDI in this analysis include governance, specifically control of corruption, and exports of …
Crime, Institutions And Sector-Specific Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz, W. Charles Sawyer, Rossitza Wooster
Crime, Institutions And Sector-Specific Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz, W. Charles Sawyer, Rossitza Wooster
Luisa Blanco
In this article, we explore how crime and institutions affect the flow of capital in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Latin American and Caribbean countries in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors during the 1996-2010 period. We use three different variables related to violent crime: homicides, crime victimization, and an index of organized crime. We find that there is a correlation between the institutional and crime variables, where the significance of institutional variables tends to disappear when the crime variables are added to the model. We find that higher crime victimization and organized crime are associated with …